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Quote note (#144)

Gold balanced the forces of the world. As such, no matter where you went, gold was transferable to the local currency. Whether you were in France or Florence, your gold was good. In fact, if you weren’t in your own backyard, using your own community’s debt instruments, gold was basically the only thing that was accepted. So whether you wanted to buy a copy of the Bible, fight a foreign war, or build a palace, you needed gold.

Then came The Revolution: replacing the Monarch, the Church, and generally anything good by instituting “reforms” and encouraging “progress” in the name of “the people.” At first, the sheer number of supporters of constitutional democracy was sufficient to establish this social experiment. Eventually, however, sheer numbers would prove insufficient. Why? Because this “new” system failed on every account to educate its supporters on the essential matters of politics and economics, leaving them intellectually high and dry and prone to the exact golden calves that the Church and Monarch were protecting them from. As a result, after experiencing a bit of lifestyle creep, an newfound and ever-growing sense of entitlement began to take root. And oh did those roots grow deep.

The roots grew so deep that the electorate began knocking on democracy’s door, demanding more and more. Where once they were thankful for their new liberties and freedoms, they soon found themselves adrift at sea, lost and without cause. To unyoke this infinite expansion of wants from the finite, gold-bound resources of the state, the Revolutionaries had no choice but to take hold of the money supply of their nations, wresting it from the grasp of sound money and all the goodness and balance it had fostered. This was the only way to keep up the ruse and placate the electorate. So they instituted Central Banking at a scale never before seen. …

(The whole thing is glorious, including — in the original — footnotes.)

36 Responses to this entry

Hillary “Satan” Clinton may try to win by promising different things to targeted interest groups in swing states. Whoever has the better software wins.

More generous public pensions and healthcare plans, full legalization and easier immigration, federal police oversight, strengthening No Child Left Behind, and SocSec & Medicare increases starting after the conclusion of her second term.

Digital currencies will be allowed but all transactions must be registered with a government server.

in bitcoins blockchain all transactions is public, available to anyone. Because bitcoins is IP based network, it is quite possible to collect IPs from where transactions originated. In fact nobody know for sure how many bitcoins supernode servers in fact runs by govts.

governments always criminalizing things by prohibiting it. but they are able to learn too – prohibition never works. transaction on bitcoin network depends on miners, at present deflationary btc price trend, it may happens that only miners who subsidized by govt will survive. Independent miners are not able to cover electricity cost in most countries. There are many nontrivial methods to control bitcoins are available for government. Even they can make some profit in process. No doubts fed will confront anything threatening usd.

“Bitstamp | A market order to buy 10000 bitcoins right now would take 2557358.6607 USD and would take the last price up to 420.3600 USD, resulting in an average price of 255.7359 USD/BTC. | Data vintage: 0.0087 seconds ”

Market cap is so low Peter Thiel could change it by 25% on a whim. It’s got no inertia, hence the volatility.

it does not look pretty for those who invested at 250 and that were large hedge funds. we have panic sale now and it formed double bottom already. But market is thin … can be easily moved in any direction.

Obviously bitcoin is a commodity that has many similarities to gold but trying to just upend the entire economy sphere with one commodity isnt going to work out so well. OT just takes the useful functions of bitcoin and expands upon them into not just crypto-currencies but a full sweet of crypto market tools.

Egold … I like the sound of that. But of course now we are confronted with a meta-problem: A ridiculously low barrier to entry to get into the crypto-currency business, leading to a proliferation of crypto-currencies. Taken as a whole, crypto currencies themselves are a form of fiat! Even worse than fiat, actually, since you can’t use them to pay your taxes …

Horror crypto? A ridiculous notion. Besides, I don’t know what you could do to make the cryptocurrency market more unpredictable than it is right now.

That’s an interesting point about E-gold and Libertyreserve, though. The USG certainly didn’t take very kindly to both of ’em, but that has more to do with the fact that both companies were extremely poorly managed and were marketed as “financial services” providers. (Somewhere between Western Union and private banking.) There should be reasonable, and long-term-sustainable, ways to peg cryptocurrencies to commodities and fiat currencies. It’s certainly an extremely intriguing idea…

Volatility without some rational underlying model for understanding what is going on is useless. How should a hedge fund manager value bitcoin? The fact that it’s underlying structure is fatally flawed — because if it caught on its price would soar — means that paradoxically bitcoin is fundamentally almost useless. Therefore it should have very little value. Over time I could see bitcoin going to zero, actually. It will be like the beer can collecting craze of 1976, which cost me a couple hundred bucks when the bottom fell out.

If you sold bitconis for 1 mln usd 4 days ago, now you can buy your bitcoins back and keep 500000usd in your pocket. Seems like good deal to me. Of course bitcoins price manipulated, it is not difficult considering relatively small btc market cap. But almost everything is manipulated nowadays. Oil price manipulated too, still oil quite useful.

in 2020 last bitcoin will be mined, no more new bitcoins I doubt its value will go to zero. people who invested in bitcoins don’t like to see their investments vanishing. As Carl Sagan wrote: – been too skeptical you can miss good things.

Well, we’ll see. I contend bitcoin is fundamentally flawed and that a zero valuation is one among several possible scenarios. Its only use is providing anonymity. I presume there are other ways to do that — and if there aren’t yet there will be soon.

Bitcoins do not provide anonymity. in most bitcoin transactions on blockchain.info anyone can see IP of the person from whom this transaction originated. To anonymize it, some other quite serious measures have to be taken. People who writing about bitcons usually dont have much idea about it. It goes same with many other areas. Sort of indicator of gradual degradation of writing community world wide.

Well then bitcoin is utterly, completely useless and is properly worth zero. It’s not a store of value, not a widely-accepted medium of exchange and not a widely recognized unit of account. It can’t grow into the two latter functions because it is not, and never will be, a reliable store of value. So it’s useless, and thus worthless.

Nathan Cook Reply:January 15th, 2015 at 1:09 am

Blockchain.info connects to a (largish) subset of full nodes, of which there are usually about 6000. (And here they are.) It won’t record your IP if you’re using a light client like Electrum (although your Electrum server might). Basically, while it’s possible for a competent threat to link transactions to IPs, it’s not just a case of looking it up on a website.

I agree that ‘serious measures’ are needed properly to anonymize transaction origin. However this does not equate to overly complex measures. Accessing a web wallet via Tor would have a good chance of success even against three letter agencies, provided of course they weren’t already interested in you.

If Gold is Reactionary than Open-Transactions is Neoreactionary and bitcoin is merely libertarian.

This is one of those moments that I wish I had a blog. Of course I won’t be running one yet (and even when I do it wont be neoreactionary as you know it) so I’ll just post my thoughts on this matter in comment format. Once Jackal Quarterly is done with Cameralism, Anti-Fragilitys Tangential Topics, The German Enlightenment, and The Hyperboreans I will move onto the technology behind Open-Transactions, Money/Economics in reactionary history, Non-State Actors, and Cults. Thats pretty far off so heres just a quick reaction.

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Libertarian anti-state sound money

Oh its going to be one of those articles. I have alot of respect for groups that at least recognize that the modern state isnt a moral good and that this cannot last forever. I am not a fan of the anarchistic assumption that all government is statist and the associated rhetoric. Yes Gold does a better job at alot of things for the common man than fiat currencies but make no mistake it can be manipulated.

This rhetoric becomes really irritating when the author drops this bomb as an arguement why the Demon Hive will not shift the current fiat regime:

“It’s too limiting for their “noble” needs”

Its their needs and desires. Yeah ‘noble’ is in quotes but its not making a rhetorical ploy against those wishing the state to be God on earth and that they know better but that its pure elite sentiment causing this. If he really was going to make claims against corrupt elite trying to push the common man out with ‘noble’ lies he could easily put some much needed economic historical context.

I did enjoy the article however the central enemy that seems to be highlighted is “The masses.” While populism and drawing the population in as the justification for the State did allow for some motive power there is much more to the transfer to fiat currency than ‘THE MASSES DEMANDED IT.’ The masses were sold it. Much as the masses were sold the income tax. The Demon Hive is always working hard to fuck people over.

There are also bits (while seemingly randomly added in) that I did thoroughly enjoy.

“The US is financially bankrupt because it’s morally bankrupt. Not the reverse.”

“Basically, the US is broke because the Revolutionaries broke it.”

Hahahah. Fantastic. This first quote is on the money (recognizing that there is more than just moral failure that leads to demonic incentives). The second quote is an unintended jab against the Founders if youre NRx.

Basically the article seems to drop the ball on giving any practical or moral reason that bitcoin is the exact counter revolution and weakens the conclusion considerably. This isnt exactly uncommon in libertarian writings. All in all Thank The Lord for Footnotes. I was talking about why I wish I saw more of those things in neoreactionary blogs within the past few days coincidentally enough.

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Its no surprise that Technocommercialists **cough** libertarians not triggered by sane government **cough** would be drawn to this article. Trying to attach the reactionary rhetoric and theme to libertarian foci such as Money,Armies, and Courts really is the way to got to get those incels to open their minds alittle.

Bitcoin is a pretty badass application of certain cryptographic technologies and opens up a world where people consider that the central banks are probably not the only thing we have to live with. Now people attached all sorts of mystical revolutionary zeal to bitcoin. Heralding it as the true agora. Then it shined as a speculative commodity and soon everyone sorta forgot about the thing. Bitcoin is not functioning as a stable store of value or a useful technology for making daily transactions. It also requires a great amount of trust. These all lead to bitcoin being not so useful for mass adoption and application. Chris Spends 30 minutes discussing the specifics of the troubles with this Digital Gold.

Basically what Chris did was create a decentralized crypo market framework for unforgeable receipts, actually anonymous digital currency, smart contracts, secure asset trading and account creation and a fully GUI for actually using this technology for the lay person (which will be released in its commercial form of Monetas).The software’s author likens it to “PGP for money”.

Open-Transactions is a combination of server and client side software. The client software is used for wallets, trade, communication, and anything else the user is going to be using OT for. The server side software is only there for 3rd party verification and signing. As well as utilizing voting pool systems in order to prevent fraud and ‘bank robberies’ as we have seen with the bitcoin system.

To Reiterate: Open-Transactions is not a crypto currency. Instead it is a tool box that offers the practical generation of effective crypto-markets.

Since I am not utopian I do admit that there are possible problems with it:

However they are not at all the same type of issues affecting bitcoin and offers a method for competing currencies so that we arent stuck with the dichotomy of bitcoin vs fiat.

Neoreactionary Applications:

First off: MONEY

If you can figure out why open-transactions is so powerful you can guess at its possible uses and potential big bucks to be made. Everyone needs to eat and finding ways of independently funding oneself is what gave Moldbug the time to actually sit down and create the flawed yet interesting Unqualified Reservations. This cant be volunteer for long if people want to get great things done.

Second: Kicking one of the real enemies right in the teeth

Neoreaction does not spend much time with banking. Now the libertarians spend almost all their time with the bankers but seriously there is so much left to discuss on the topic and the financial system is a major components of the Demons Hive. Its a major component of almost all governmental policy, revolution and warfare. Strike at the purse and you weaken the enemy immeasurably.

Third: Decentralized Exit in place for communities

Now exit>voice when considering purely physical exit is an interesting debate. However communities being able to exit the current financial casino without having to leave their homes really allows for a true counter revolution to be incentivized with the people. There are other things that need to happen for this to be totally plausible but creating tools for people to organically find their own destiny seems like the only way NRx has a shot.

Fourth: Escape the bitcoin debate.

The bitcoin debate has come to the point where people realize its not going to usher in the new era and honestly it doesnt have the rhetorical bite it used to.

Fifth: It gives the Cameralists something to do

Metacameralism and the moldbug conceptions really dont do the history of the cameralists any justice. I am producing a large project on the Cameralists as my first NRx published work and I will go into more detail but the cameralists were created primarily for figuring out ways to fill Frederic The Firsts coffers. If neoreaction is going to take any hints from the cameralists it is far better to figure out practical ways that crypto-markets can help fund the Decentralized Duchies rather than try to pass off Joint Stock Republicanism or Formalism as anything deeply resembling the Cameralist Tradition.

Sixth: Colonialism

One of the major applications of open transactions is not just offering tools for agorists to pump value into stable society but it allows the third world unbanked economy to be something that civilized men can access. There will be some real economic incentive for groups other than the Chinese to really consider doing something with the Dark Continent which can benefit both the Natives and the Neoreactionaries.

Thats all I really can justify in a comment for now but I implore those who have read this to really spend the time looking at Open-Transactions and seeing how it can be more useful to Neoreaction Today than Bitcoin ever will.

However they are not at all the same type of issues affecting bitcoin and offers a method for competing currencies so that we arent stuck with the dichotomy of bitcoin vs fiat.”

what you saying is that for some reason (pardon, it is hard to comprehend for me) open transactions is better then btcoins. Well, how it can be so, if bitcoins does not have any of those grave vulnerabilities. And most of opentransactionss futures already implemented in bitcoins.

you should probably read the whole thing instead of just skimming along and assuming that OT is a direct competitor to bitcoin and trying to make an edgy comeback.

>Well, how it can be so, if bitcoins does not have any of those grave vulnerabilities

they arent

a. that grave

b. and bitcoin has a host of separate problems elaborated above

c. that vulnerability page is just a token for intellectual honesty. Nothing is perfect. However some things are less problematic than others.

> And most of opentransactionss futures already implemented in bitcoins.

bro. You didnt even read this. If you had and knew what bitcoin did and what OT did you would recognize that most of bitcoins actual capacities and ‘futures’ are not along the same lines as OT except in idealistic dreams.

I read your article completely, as well OT about and vulnerability page. sure there is some development, but it just look like another crypto, with raw code and which may even never take off. I’ve been with bitcoins since 2011 and all that time I see somebody bashing bitcoins and declaring it dead. I do not have idealistic dreams about bitcoins either, with same success I can make assumption that you are having idealistic dreams about OT and at least I even have a reason to think that way.